This sounded ominous. Niobe thought so, too. She said she did not like it. They must have been putting their heads together. She hoped that the mass meeting was not to herald a mass walkout.
‘Well, I suppose you couldn’t blame them,’ I said. ‘Nobody likes being mixed up with the police, especially in a case of murder.’
The mass meeting took place in Evans’s large sitting-room immediately after lunch and Niobe’s pious hopes were soon dashed. It was clear that, as soon as the police would allow it, a mass walk-out was planned.
Evans, as one would expect, proved a competent, business-like chairman. He was hospitable, too. Coffee and an assortment of liqueurs were dispensed by Constance. The armchairs, some indigenous, some borrowed, were extremely comfortable. The tenants settled down ghoulishly.
‘I want to make it clear,’ said Evans, ‘that no personal feelings are involved. I’m sure we have all been very happy at Weston Pipers and the last thing we would have wanted is to leave.’
Here Niobe spoke up with some abruptness.
‘I hope you remember that you have all signed a three-year agreement,’ she said.
‘So had Billie and Elysée,’ Constance Kent pointed out, ‘but they went and so shall we.’
‘Please! No arguments at this stage,’ said her husband, ‘although circumstances do alter cases. The point is, Chelion, that whereas the fact of a murder wouldn’t do some of us any harm because of the nature of our work, it must have its effect on others of us. Besides, all this police questioning and probing is a confounded waste of our time and it also saps our concentration. I need all my energies for a damned Chapter Eight which is refusing to come right. I am not willing to expend them answering questions from the Chief Superintendent about matters which are no concern of mine.’
‘But you would still be subject to questioning, even if you left today,’ said Niobe.
‘Granted, and I have no doubt I could survive it, but there are others, as I say.’
‘Including me,’ said the soldierly Constance. ‘The publicity over this business will be the ruin of my books. You can write pulsating stories of star-crossed lovers, or you can get yourself mixed up in a sordid case of the murder of a defenceless, grey-haired old woman, but you can’t do both.’
‘Oh, there I think you exaggerate, Constance,’ said Targe.
‘No, I don’t. Maybe your own work won’t suffer at all. You may even be able to make capital out of this awful business, as will Mandrake and even Cassie.’
‘Don’t you believe it,’ said Cassie McHaig. ‘My paper is very finicky about its reporters getting mixed up with the police. I’m supposed to champion the cause of the downtrodden, not to get myself a bit of notoriety by being questioned about the brutal murder of an old lady.’
‘Before we go any further,’ said Targe, ‘there is something I think Chelion ought to know. I’ve told the others, Chelion, and, to put our cards on the table, it is the real reason for our wanting to leave.’
‘I’m not sure this is the time,’ began Evans.
‘It’s got to be said, ’said Polly Hempseed. ‘Personally, unless I can get the reporters to mention me under my real name which, as most of you know, is Conway, I’m in the same boat as Constance. You can’t write letters of sob-stuff advice to the lovelorn in a woman’s paper and at the same time get yourself tied up in an unsavoury case like this one. I’m with Cassie all the way.’
‘Then why don’t you marry her?’ said Niobe. Everybody looked astounded at the boldness of this uncompromising question.
‘Aren’t you married?’ asked Constance.
Latimer Targe tried again.
‘With all respect to the chair,’ he said, ‘I feel I must speak. It is true, Chelion, that poor Miss Minnie did have a claim to this estate and her cousin’s money, isn’t it?’
I said, ‘She had no legal claim, Targe.’
‘You rat!’ said Niobe to Targe. She began to cry.
‘You told us you knew, but you didn’t tell us how you found out,’ said Cassie. (This was all news to me, Dame Beatrice. A nest of vipers was beginning to hatch out.)
‘Oh, well, I ferret around, you know,’ said Targe, in the apologetic voice he had used in addressing me. ‘I thought Miss Minnie was an interesting old lady and might have something in her past which would make a story if I changed the names of people and places, you know. Miss Kennett did say that she thought Miss Minnie must have had a past, and as Miss Kennett was a newspaper woman and reported crime and so forth, I thought perhaps she knew something and that I could track it down. I was rather stuck for material for another book, you see – one is, sometimes – so I poked around and kind of dug up the dirt, you know. Well, that’s the way it goes, isn’t it?’
‘You rat!’ said Niobe for the second time. ‘Just be quiet! Nobody wants to know.’
Chapter Five
The Case for the Police
« ^ »
THE meeting broke up in some disorder. Everybody talked at once and Niobe wept. In the end, when he could make himself heard, Evans suggested that we should all hold our horses until we saw how the cat was going to jump and not worry about pigs in pokes until the pigeons headed for home, and with this splendid collection of metaphors he cleared us all out of his sitting-room and settled down, if the sounds were anything to go by, to a first-class row with Constance Kent. At any rate, no more was said about anybody leaving.
The police came again next day, the day of my arrest. They began by taking me through my story, the same story as I have given you, Dame Beatrice, in these pages. If you are going to help me, you had better know the extent of the case against me. I should not have thought it was strong enough to warrant my arrest, but I suppose it must be, as I am now in custody. The police are not anxious to make mistakes.
I think I had better report the interview as I did the previous one; that is, in the form of question and answer, because it is the form the interview took, and a very uncomfortable occasion it was, because I soon perceived that they had only one thought in their heads. They were certain I had killed Miss Minnie and they believed they knew my motive. The means, of course, were obvious. There remained only the question of opportunity, but they had satisfied themselves about that, too.
The main plank in their platform was the fact that Miss Minnie had been a relative of Mrs Dupont-Jacobson. They had been in contact with the lawyers and had found out that Miss Minnie’s full name was Minnesota Dupont and that she had been Mrs Dupont-Jacobson’s first cousin.
They even admitted that a previous will had named Minnesota Dupont as sole heiress. It turned out, however, that the two women had fallen out when Miss Minnie had joined the Panconscious sect and had promised to leave them her money. Upon this, Mrs Dupont-Jacobson had re-made her will, this time in my favour, so my conversation with the police went as follows:
‘Are you sure you knew nothing of Miss Minnie’s existence before she came here, sir?’
‘I knew nothing of her at all until I returned from Paris. She had then been living in the bungalow here for several months, I believe.’
‘Were you surprised when you found out that, apart from a few bequests to charity, you were Mrs Dupont-Jacobson’s heir?’
‘Naturally I was surprised; overwhelmed, in fact.’
‘Did it not occur to you that there might be persons with a better right to the money and the property than yourself?’
‘No. Why should it? People have a right to dispose of their own things as they wish.’
‘Why did you straightway go to Paris?’
‘Why shouldn’t I go to Paris?’
‘You did not go to escape from claims which were already being made upon you?’
‘Certainly not. I went there to get on with a novel I was writing.’